The New South Wales Contingent to Sudan provides insights into colonial Australian society in the 1880s. THOMAS J. ROGERS GENERAL GORDON “G ood-bye, my son; I look upon you as going to your grave.” With these words David Weir farewelled his son Robert in early 1885. Private Robert Weir, a volunteer in the local militia, had volunteered for service in the force that the colony of New South Wales was preparing to send to Sudan. His father’s prescience was accurate: Private Weir died of dysentery at the Sudanese port of Suakin in May. The Sudan Contingent is usually only a footnote in Australian military histories, but the historical records surrounding it offer insights into contemporary colonial thought on patriotism, Imperial unity and the future of the Australian colonies. A rebellion in Africa In 1882, with the end of the Anglo– Egyptian War, Egypt became a de facto protectorate of the British Empire. At this time nominally claimed by the Ottoman Empire, Egypt itself claimed suzerainty of the vast territory to its south known as Sudan. A rebellion had broken out in Sudan under the leadership of Muhammad Ahmad, a revered Islamic scholar. Claiming to be the Mahdi, the prophesied “Rightly Guided One”, he implored his followers to reclaim the territory of Sudan, removing all Egyptian, Ottoman and European imperial powers. Egypt sent an army to crush the revolt, but it was soundly defeated by the Mahdist forces. In May 1884, British Prime Minister William Gladstone told Parliament that he wanted to avoid “a war of conquest against a people struggling to be free”. When honourable members objected to his phrasing, he made his position clear: “Yes; these are people struggling to be free, and they are struggling rightly to be free.” Those words would come back to haunt him. Britain could not ignore the rebellion. Two separate Egyptian forces led by British officers in Sudan had been defeated by Mahdists. The British now sought to evacuate the Egyptian army garrisons that were in Mahdist territory, particularly in Khartoum, at the confluence of the Blue and White Nile rivers. General Sir Charles Gordon was given this task. Gordon had made his name as the commander of the Ever Victorious Army, the small European and American-trained Chinese force that had quashed the Taiping Rebellion in the early 1860s in China. He had been an administrator in Sudan in the 1870s, and had gained further fame through his attempts to end slavery and the slave trade there. By this stage of his life, he saw part of his mission as bringing the light of Christianity to the world. A British martyr Gordon was ordered to evacuate SUDAN WARTIME ISSUE 97 | 11 10 | WARTIME ISSUE 97 Arthur Collingridge, The Departure of the Australian Contingent for the Sudan (1885, oil on canvas, 116 x 176 cm). AWM ART16593 Right: Unknown artist, Major General Charles Gordon (1880, lithograph, 54 x 38 cm), used in this instance as an in memoriam with black border c. 1885. AWM ART50014 AVENGING